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Kirk Penton, QMI Agency

Bryant Turner is not in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers media guide, which is a little strange when you consider he was signed on May 9.

There should have been plenty of time to draw up a bio on the rookie defensive tackle and give him half a page like the rest of the newcomers.

The reason Bryant isn’t in the media guide is because he wasn’t supposed to play for the Bombers this season.

In an effort to prevent the annual publication from being full of players who were cut at the end of training camp — after the media guide’s print deadline — the team brass gave the media relations department a heads up when it came to who was going to be cut. Those players were then left out of the media guide.

Bryant was on that list.

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Yet there he was Friday night, teaming up with Don Oramasionwu to hold the Edmonton Eskimos, who just so happened to boast the CFL’s top rushing attack, to 29 yards along the ground in the second half as the Bombers improved to 5-1 with a 28-16 win.

Turner was supposed to rotate with Oramasionwu in the injured Doug Brown’s spot, but he was pressed into full-time duty when Dorian Smith went down in the second quarter with a high ankle sprain.

Not bad for a guy who was supposed to be back home in … well, we don’t know where he’s from because he’s not in the media guide.

“I’m glad I proved some people wrong,” Turner said with a huge smile on in the bouncing Bomber locker-room on Friday night.

Turner, who appears to be between 20 and 30 years of age (again, not in the media guide), didn’t flinch when asked to take on a bigger role in his second CFL game.

“I just felt like I was going to have to step up,” he said. “It felt like a weight was put on my shoulders. I felt pretty comfortable out there, actually.”

He looked comfortable, too, recording his first CFL sack as the entire Bomber defence swarmed Eskimos quarterback Ricky Ray like a pack of killer bees for the whole second half.

“Turner was good,” head coach Paul LaPolice said Saturday.

Turner, who we’re assuming played college ball at a university or college, is a fine example of the improved depth the East Division-leading Bombers are enjoying this season.

Brown and Smith went down, and Oramasionwu and Turner — a 23-year-old from Mobile, Ala., who went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, according to the Internet — stepped up.

Although he had just picked up his first CFL sack and was celebrating the big win with his teammates, Turner ended the interview with tears in his eyes.

Even though he didn’t know Richard Harris long, he was still impacted by his late defensive line coach.

“He’s one of the greatest men I ever met. I honestly can say that,” Turner said. “Me and Jason Vega are two rookies who came in. Jason Vega just mentioned something to coach Harris about getting to know him better at practice one day.

“Coach Harris went out of his way to call us and take us out to lunch. Coach Harris took us out to lunch twice as rookies and talked to us about everything. That’s the type of man coach Harris was. He was a huge impact on me.”

Harris will be laid to rest on Sunday afternoon in Winnipeg, but his legacy will live on in young men like Turner.